Seven faculty honored for excellence in teaching, research and scholarship
Western Washington University honored seven outstanding faculty members recently for excellence in teaching, research and scholarship. This year’s award recipients, Professor LeaAnn Martin, Professor John Miles, Instructor Kathleen Nuzum, Professor Edward J. Vajda, Professor James Vyvyan, and Professor Zhe George Zhang, received public recognition at the Inaugural Provost/Faculty Senate Spring Awards Ceremony May 23. Senior Instructor Kathleen Saunders, a 2010 award winner, was also recognized at last month’s ceremony.
More about the recipients:
Physical Education, Health and Recreation Professor LeaAnn Martin, winner of the 2011 Peter J. Elich Teaching Award
Martin started at Western in 1991, just after completing her Ph.D. at the University of Texas. She teaches in the teacher preparation program and specializes in elementary Physical Education. Martin also serves as the Associate Dean for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. In 1995, she was named the College Professional Physical Educator of the Year by the Washington Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. In 2003 she was given the Washington Award for Excellence in Teacher Preparation by the Washington State Board of Education. Martin was instrumental in designing the pedagogy program in Physical Education/Health, which has served as a model for other programs. She is also very proud to know that two of her former students have been named National Physical Educators of the Year. For her, it is a true joy to teach and work with students each day and to be a part of developing outstanding physical and health educators.
The award includes a $1,500 stipend from the 草榴社区 Foundation for research and teaching expenses and recognizes Peter J. Elich and his years of service as dean of the former College of Arts and Sciences. Faculty from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Sciences and Technology are eligible for recognition.
Environmental Studies Professor John Miles, winner of the 2011 Excellence in Teaching Award
Miles grew up in New Hampshire and migrated to the Pacific Northwest for graduate school, arriving in Bellingham in 1968. He found himself in paradise for an outdoorsman and student of nature, conservation, and environmental learning. Huxley College, a new college dedicated to the environment, was forming -- something he could not have imagined in his life before coming to Western. Miles has served as chair and dean in Huxley College of the Environment, created experiential programs for undergraduates and graduates, written and edited six books (with more in the works), and has generally had a great time with great students and colleagues over 43 years.
The Excellence in Teaching Award includes a $1,500 stipend for teaching, research or professional enhancement made possible by the 草榴社区 Foundation. Nominations for the award, presented to faculty members from Huxley, Woodring or Fairhaven colleges, the College of Fine and Performing Arts, or the College of Business and Economics, are solicited from faculty, students and alumni.
History Instructor Kathleen Nuzum, 2011 winner, and Anthropology Senior Instructor Kathleen Saunders, 2010 winner, of the Ronald Kleinknecht Excellence in Teaching Award
Nuzum grew up in Northern England as well as in the Pacific Northwest, graduating from 草榴社区 in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts in History and from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland with a Master of Letters in Historiography in 1997 and Ph.D. in Modern History in 2005. Her areas of research include the philosophy of history, history of education, and intellectual history. She began teaching at Western in 2004 and currently teaches a wide range of courses in the History Department, as well as the first-year seminar sequence and a junior seminar for the Honors Program.
Saunders joined Western’s Anthropology Department in the fall of 2000, directly from graduate studies in Anthropology and Biomedical Ethics at the University of Minnesota. Her specializations are science, technology, society and economic anthropology. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in fall of 2009. Her courses include Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Social Theory, Qualitative Methods, Kinship and Family, Sex and Gender, the Anthropology of Reproduction and her signature course, Cyborg Anthropology.
In 2004, Saunders was invited to become a Service Learning Faculty Fellow. She applied the pedagogy learned in that program to her teaching of Economic Anthropology by incorporating projects around hunger and food insecurity to make the connections between local conditions and global processes. This anti-hunger work was one of the reasons she received the 2010/11 Eleanor Roosevelt Global Citizenship Award from the Center for Public Anthropology, a U.S. and Canadian organization that promotes anthropology in the service of humanity.
The Kleinknecht award is given each year to a non-tenure-track faculty member from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The award is a teaching award and candidates are asked to submit materials that speak to their teaching such as student evaluations, copies of syllabi, reading lists, writing assignments, final exams, and any related materials used in their courses. The award includes a $1,000 stipend.
Center for International Studies Professor Edward J. Vajda and Chemistry Professor James Vyvyan, winners of the 2011 Paul J. Olscamp Research Award
Vajda has been a professor at 草榴社区 since 1987 and currently serves as director of the Center for East Asian Studies and interim director of the Linguistics Program. He teaches Russian language, culture and history, as well as general linguistics and courses on Inner Asian and Siberian peoples. Vajda has conducted extensive documentation work on Ket, an endangered language spoken by fewer than 100 elderly people in a remote area near Siberia's Yenisei River. He has recently presented evidence supporting a genealogical link between Yeniseian, the family to which Ket belongs, and the Na-Dene languages of North America. Vajda received Western’s Excellence of Teaching Award in 1992.
Vyvyan was raised in rural southeastern Wisconsin where he was fascinated by all things scientific from an early age. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry in 1991, and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota in 1995. After a Camille and Henry Dreyfus postdoc at Hope College, he joined the 草榴社区 faculty in 1997. Vyvyan’s research on the synthesis of biologically active natural products and new synthetic methods has included nearly 50 undergraduates and 14 graduate students, resulting in 14 publications with 24 different student coauthors. His work is currently funded through grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the ACS-Petroleum Research Fund. Among Vyvyan’s awards are a NSF CAREER Award, a Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the 2008 Peter J. Elich Excellence in Teaching Award.
The Paul J. Olscamp Research Award recognizes faculty members who have made outstanding contributions to research and scholarship. The awards come with $500, made possible through an endowment provided by former 草榴社区 president Paul J. Olscamp.
Decision Sciences Professor Zhe George Zhang, winner of the 2011 Outstanding Scholarship Award
Zhang is a professor of Management Science in the Department of Decision Sciences. He received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Master of Arts in Economics from Nankai University, China; his MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto; and his PhD from the University of Waterloo, Canada. He has published more than 40 articles in many prestigious international journals such as Management Science, Operations Research, Queueing Systems, and Journal of Applied Probability.
Zhang’s research interests include queueing theory and applications, stochastic dynamic programming, probability models in reliability, and supply chain management issues in manufacturing/service organizations. His current interests include: quantitative and economic analysis of congestion problems in urban/mass transportation networks, health/medical care systems, and public service systems with both customer service quality and security concerns.
The Outstanding Scholarship Award includes a $1,500 stipend, made possible by the 草榴社区 Foundation, for professional scholarship activities.